MEDICAL
INFORMATION
FOR KIDS
INFORMATION
FOR KIDS
LATEST NEWS
07 Apr 2010 | Press Release
After making it through six years of tough medical training, it was an eight-year-old's request that stumped Kim Chilman-Blair. As a medical student at the University of Otago, she met a patient who had just been diagnosed with epilepsy and wanted to find out more about it.
"It was a little girl called Wendy and her mother asked me where she could find information. I thought that would be really easy, but it was really, really hard to find anything available to explain it to children."
As she kept looking, she discovered there was a dearth of child-friendly information for a whole range of conditions.
The problem wasn't confined to New Zealand, either.
"It was a problem in Australia, in the UK, in Chile, all over the world."
Determined to fill that information gap, she joined forces with fellow medical student Kate Hersov and the pair dreamed up Medikidz, a series of comic books starring a gang of medical superheroes. Their mission? To give children straight-forward explanations of medical conditions.
Over several years, the pair worked with dozens of New Zealand specialists to gather accurate, no-nonsense information about more than 40 different conditions.
Eventually, they both gave up their jobs as full-time doctors to move to Britain, where they launched the first Medikidz titles last year.
There are now books on 20 different conditions, including epilepsy (featuring Wendy, the eight-year-old who started it all), leukaemia, diabetes, asthma and swine flu.
More are in the pipeline and Dr Chilman-Blair hopes the series will one day cover more than 300 different topics.
For now, the books are available only to Kiwi children through the Medikidz website, but will be launched here in bookshops in June.
Each book follows the same basic format. A child whose condition has just been diagnosed is visited by the Medikidz, a gang of five over-the-top superheroes who take the child back to their home planet, Mediland, which is shaped like a human body.
Meet the Medikidz
Axon - knows all about the brain and has a pet counting-robot, Abacus.
Chi - the lung specialist.
Pump - the blood expert.
Skinderella - knows all about skin and bone and can morph into a skeleton.
Gastro - the expert on the tum, bum and everything in between.
By touring Mediland, the child learns what has caused their condition, what it is doing to their body, how it can be treated and how they can manage it.
"It's basically a fun way to describe what would normally be really boring pathology," Dr Chilman-Blair says.
No matter what the condition or treatment is, there is basic advice all parents can follow to help their child cope, she says.
"The thing is to remember that kids are more intelligent than we tend to give them credit for." It's best not to give them false reassurances, even if it is tempting.
"If something's going to hurt, don't say, 'This is not going to hurt' or 'It's just a little prick'.
Say, 'It's going to hurt, but it will be over quickly and we'll help you get through it'. Give them the facts. One of the most common fears children have about their treatment will not surprise most parents - it's injections or anything to do with needles," Dr Chilman-Blair says.
"The concept in their head is a lot worse than the reality of it."
There are lots of psychological coping methods that can help, she says.
"Distractions, like having something cool to look at or hold. Concentrating on your breathing or forcing your mind to think about something nice like a safe or happy place."
Although information cannot make a child better, it can help to make their condition and treatment seem less overwhelming, she says.
"If they understand what's happening to them, kids can become part of the decision-making process, which is hugely empowering."